A YEAR 11 student from Brindabella Christian College is the first Canberran to win a gold medal at the International Earth Science Olympiad.

Maxwell Etherington was awarded the top award at Daegu, Republic of Korea, following the olympiad, which ran from August 26 to September 3.

He competed against more than 180 students from 43 countries to win gold, finishing in the top 10 per cent of earth science students in the world.

Part of a four-member team, Maxwell wasn’t the only one to come out with a medal, and his three other team members, Anthony Manns, Imogen Viner and Jordan Rogers, won silver medals, putting them in the top 30 per cent of students competing.

The International Earth Science Olympiad involved four theory exams and four practical tests covering all aspects of Earth systems science and planetary astronomy. Topics included the geology of planetary bodies, the formation of rocks, rock and mineral identification, sea-level rise processes and the geochemistry of groundwater.

Students also teamed up with competitors from different countries in an international team field investigation, where they analysed the paleoenvironment of a Cretaceous sedimentary rock sequence that contained dinosaur and other animal track trace fossils.